400 Posts

That's what it says on my dashboard page. I have published 400 works. True, they sit on a huge library shelve in no order whatsoever in a dusty part of the universe where only a few people ever wander, but hey--I'm published.

So I used my blog about making my class as fun as Toastmasters as a speech for the International Speech contest. I didn't want to win. I intimidate the other members of my club, so they didn't want to compete. I told one of the guys that I would handicap myself by not preparing my speech in advance. All I had was the memory of the blog and a very rough outline--twenty words to take me from topic to topic. I won. Now I have to give that same speech at the next level of the contest which is on a Saturday and will conflict with the Saturday class that I am taking. It is a sickness wanting to win so much. It was a pretty good speech and thinking about it has given me some really good ideas for making my class more fun.

I am into the next semester of my class with a whole new group of students. I like these students much better. Some of the past group are still hanging around trying to do internships this semester. We'll see. So I have livened it up a little and I haven't had to raise my voice and yell at all. But there are only 7 students. I don't think that they will keep the class open for just 7 students.

Yesterday a good friend of mine quoted Rush Limbau (sorry--don't know the spelling). I was a little shocked and a lot sad. I hate knowing other people's politics. There was a guy on the radio talking about why partisan politics will not go away. He said your side says that 2 + 2 equals 4, but the other guys say 2 + 2 equals a duck. How are you supposed to find a middle ground between 4 and a duck? Both sides think that the other side wants to square their 4 with a duck.

This morning I heard that California finally has a state budget, but at what price. To get the last vote needed, the legislature agreed to change the primary system to allow an open primary. He had a really good reason for wanting this concession--he is a moderate who is popular with both parties, but he worries about being popular enough to win the primary in just his party (since he is a moderate saying--wait, isn't that a duck?) The bad side is that an open primary means, if one side is a lock, all the members of that party can forgo voting for the candidate in their party and they can vote for the weakest candidate of the opposite party to give their party a better shot at the general election. I hate politics. This is the worst system of governing in the world, except for all the rest.